Ghosts and Haunts of the Civil War: Authentic Accounts of the Strange and Unexplained

Book Description

From haunted battlefields to phantom soldiers, this book is a fascinating collection of chilling and intriguing stories of Civil War ghosts. It contains thirty-six such stories, including an encounter by both Teddy Roosevelt and First Lady Grace Coolidge with Abraham Lincoln in the White House.

Customer Reviews:

Eerie and historically informative.......2006-09-13

You don't have to be schizotypal to enjoy this book. It's divided up into a series of stories based on factual events that transpired during the war. The paranormal phenomena are presented objectively (not an in your face, you should believe in ghosts sort of take). I enjoyed the historical content as much or more than the tales of specters in blue and grey. The most moving thing about these stories is the sheer horror surrounding the war. Coleman recounts infamous acts of barbasism between fellow countrymen. Cold-blooded murder, thievery, arsen, etc. were the acts that fueled the development of many of the ghost stories of the civil war. I think the war sticks with the psychic thread of American society. Never before or since have so many Americans perished in a conflict. It was a treacherous time for the states, and I believe that our empathy for those living at the time is in part responsible for the ghost stories and sightings that pervade our culture. It's a way of identifying with the countless individuals who suffered secondary to the barbaric acts committed by both sides.

The stories in this book are not about believing in ghosts persay, they represent the human condition. They are an imprint that stains American culture-what's left of the blood lost by so many. I don't necessarily believe in the supernatural, but I very much enjoyed the intensely emotional stories about individuals or small groups of people who suffered during america's darkest hour.

The books contains appendices with lists of tourist attractions known for their haunts. Also, a list of hotels harboring haunts of the war is given. I plan to carry this book in the car on road trips as to not miss the opportunity to visit a hotel, battlefield, house or tavern tainted with the spiritual remains of the war.

Federal Phantoms and Southern Spooks.......2005-10-30

The title of this book promises "ghosts and haunts" and while there are ghosts to be found in this book there are far too many stories that do not involve a ghost, spook, specter, phantom or even a woolly booger. Premonitions and visions may indeed fall into the category of paranormal events and these stories may be very interesting but they do not involve ghosts and that is what the title of this book promises. A little truth in advertising please.

There are several ghost stories in this book and some of them are quite good. For example, the chapter dealing with the ghost of General Cleburne is very good and contains everything a good ghost story should have. A little background history, a little ghost history and recent eyewitness accounts are what make for a credible and full bodied ghost story and this chapter contains them all. Unfortunately, most of the chapters that do deal with ghosts have very few eyewitness accounts and are mostly just old legends and campfire tales. This book is also just full of terms like "they say" as in "They say on certain nights when the moon, blah, blah, blah." There are few things that get under my skin more than a ghost story that ends with a "they say." I want to know who says and when they said it and it seems to me that with a little leg work the author could answer those questions for me. Just to add insult to injury there are several historical errors in this book, which could have been avoided if the author had just had an editor with some knowledge of Civil War history.

It is often said that every dark cloud has a silver lining and that is surely the case with this book. Like the previously mentioned chapter about General Cleburne there are some very good chapters in this book. The writing is clear and very readable and I must confess that for the most part I enjoyed this book. Mr. Coleman has written two other ghost books since this one and each one was better than it's predecessor so I must view this book as sort of a learning experience for someone who has grown into a fine author in this genre. I would also add that the appendices in the back that list addresses and phone numbers for a number of Civil War ghost tours and haunted hotels are probably worth the price of the book all by themselves. Web sites for the tours and hotels aren't listed but maybe that can be added in a future edition. There are lots of Civil War ghost books out there and this one may not be the best of the lot but it certainly isn't the worst either.

Disappointing.......2004-02-24

This was a disappointing read to say the least. The stories are short, 2-4 pages in length and not well put together. It was like listening to late night tales around the campfire. I have read scarier stuff in Nancy Drew Mysteries. The only redeeming quality about this book is that I didn't have to buy it. I checked it out free at the public library. To summerize, don't waste your time.

Not exactly what I was hoping for, but still entertaining.......2002-10-21

Although this book was a fun and entertaining read, the stories were just too brief and not very spooky. The book does deal with some interesting stories, such as the Phantom Drummer of Shiloh and the Phantom Horseman of Little Round Top. There are also a number of stories dealing with premonitions, most notibly that which Lincoln had shortly before his assassination. Would have enjoyed a much deeper analysis of these stories, including more reference to contemporary accounts. Still, it's not a bad book and if you are interested in getting a copy, there are many out there on eBay and the like.

Haunting, chilling and exciting to read!.......2002-09-05

Where would we be without a great ghost story? For anyone who loves the Civil War and a good ghost story, I can't think of a better book to sit down and read. From various battlefields to war ravaged towns stories over the years have come to fold and placed in this unique book. There are individual stories that allow you skip, go back or jump from chapter to chapter. The stories about haunts in Gettysburg and Vicksburg were exciting to read. I found this book entertaining to read and was intrigued by the stories!

Book Description

"'All humans, by their nature,' said Aristotle, 'desire to know.' A special and unparalleled way to know is to simply go where you've never been before. And the key to this quest for knowledge is 'elsewhere.'" So begins The Elsewhere Community by acclaimed literary critic Hugh Kenner, author of The Pound Era, and himself a living archive of modernism in twentieth-century literature. Kenner traces the quest for elsewhere as it manifests itself in various modes of "travel," from the eighteenth century English tradition of a Grand Tour to the continent, to literary meetings-of-the-mind (Milton's visit to Galileo, T.S. Eliot's to Ezra Pound, Kenner's own visit to Beckett), to today's planet-wide Internet journeys, free from all physical limitations. As he chronicles this Elsewhere Community built of people exploring the unknown, Kenner illuminates how this passion has infused literature, from Homer and Dante to Dickens and Joyce. Kenner frames this unique exploration with a witty rumination on the life of the literary expatriate, fondly recalling his friendships with Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Wyndham Lewis, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and other twentieth-century literary luminaries. Thus a fascinating intellectual autobiography emerges of Hugh Kenner as critic and chronicler, a man whose own life and work uniquely position him to assess the importance of travel in literary life. Written with the confidence, grace, and verve that have always characterized Kenner's work, this delightful book is for anyone seeking to understand the irrepressible human urge to travel and to know.

Customer Reviews:

A Voyage to your own Elsewhere Community.......2001-12-17

I had never heard of Hugh Kenner until a local radio station replayed the Massey Lectures ( a radio lecture series on the Canandian Broadcasting Corporation) on which this book is based. They entranced me so much that I went out and bought this title.

Kenner expounds the merits of travelling and meeting people as a way of both learning and shaping your life and work. He starts by looking at the "Grand Tour", the visits to Europe by the English (and later North Americans, including Kenner's father) and links in Homer and "The Odyssey", Aristotle, Gibbon, Wordsworth, Milton and Dante before moving on to his own trips Elsewhere when he visited first Ezra Pound and then T.S. Eliot. These allow Kenner to tie in Yeats, James Joyce, Henry James and many others.

Kenner shows how all these writers were influenced and educated by their own voyages and exiles and how the movement of people shaped modern literature, among others.

The book is marvellously written and incredibly engaging. It sent me delving into my shelves and visiting libraries to find poems or prose by the authors he mentions. It once again focused my mind on my own desire to see England and Europe.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys literature or wants a marvellous excuse to travel and find their own Elsewhere Community.

A Great Place to Visit (and to Live...).......2000-06-17

"The Elsewhere Community" examines the role of "elsewhere" in learning. One learns by going (or being) elsewhere -- geographically, with other people, in another frame of mind, or with other types of literature. One learns by being around what one doesn't know -- something else.

And among other things, this is a fascinating account of Hugh Kenner's own voyage to elsewhere. In 1948, driving from Toronto to New Haven (via New York and Washington) with Marshall McLuhan, Kenner went to visit Ezra Pound, then incarcerated at St. Elizabeth's hospital for the mentally ill in Washington. That visit led to Kenner's subsequent career as one of the leading critics of our time. For fifty years, Kenner has explained Modernism and its leading writers (Pound, Joyce, Beckett, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and others) to us with his comprehensive intelligence and wit. This book is perhaps the closest we will come to having Kenner's autobiography, and it's a treasure.

Early on in their friendship, Ezra Pound told Kenner that he had "an ob-li-ga-tion" to visit the great people of his time. And so began Kenner's trips to Europe to meet the writers he has explained so eloquently. The stories of his experiences with these people (with Beckett and Eliot, for example) are always revealing. Kenner has always amazed readers with his power to see and to hear things that the rest of us might miss. His eye misses nothing, and his ear is musical in its ability to catch just the right inflection and the meaning beneath it. Some of these stories have appeared in Kenner's earlier books, but here they are presented not to Explain Literature, but rather in the form of five radio scripts. They are warm, personal, fascinating, and charming.

Read this book, whether or not you know Modernism. If you don't know Pound, Eliot, and Beckett, you'll want to after you read this. And you'll want to read more Kenner. Above all, you'll want to discover and explore your own "elsewheres."

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Community College Week, published by Thomson Gale on November 21, 2005. The length of the article is 794 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: $30m goes to nursing programs at California Community Colleges.(workforce training)
Author: Evelyn Heitman
Publication: Community College Week (Newspaper)
Date: November 21, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 18 Issue: 8 Page: 10(1)

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5th and Court: the land that progress forgot.(land development plans): An article from: Business Record (Des Moines)

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5th and Court: the land that progress forgot.(land development plans): An article from: Business Record (Des Moines)
Jim Pollock
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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The $6.72 million anticlimax. (failed Carriage Creek Improvement District auction in Pulaski County, Arkansas): An article from: Arkansas Business

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The $6.72 million anticlimax. (failed Carriage Creek Improvement District auction in Pulaski County, Arkansas): An article from: Arkansas Business
George Waldon
Manufacturer: Journal Publishing, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Arkansas Business, published by Journal Publishing, Inc. on December 2, 1991. The length of the article is 1675 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The $6.72 million anticlimax. (failed Carriage Creek Improvement District auction in Pulaski County, Arkansas)
Author: George Waldon
Publication: Arkansas Business (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 2, 1991
Publisher: Journal Publishing, Inc.
Volume: v8 Issue: n49 Page: p1(3)

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AAP CATCH program promotes 'medical home' concept: funding available.(Practice Trends)(American Academy of Pediatrics)(Community Access to Child Health program): An article from: Pediatric News

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AAP CATCH program promotes 'medical home' concept: funding available.(Practice Trends)(American Academy of Pediatrics)(Community Access to Child Health program): An article from: Pediatric News

Manufacturer: International Medical News Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Pediatric News, published by International Medical News Group on May 1, 2004. The length of the article is 4867 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: AAP CATCH program promotes 'medical home' concept: funding available.(Practice Trends)(American Academy of Pediatrics)(Community Access to Child Health program)
Publication: Pediatric News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2004
Publisher: International Medical News Group
Volume: 38 Issue: 5 Page: 39(1)

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ACORN - just a bunch of nuts? (members of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now fight proposed sales-tax increases)(includes related articles ... members): An article from: Arkansas Business

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ACORN - just a bunch of nuts? (members of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now fight proposed sales-tax increases)(includes related articles ... members): An article from: Arkansas Business
Carrie Rengers
Manufacturer: Journal Publishing, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Arkansas Business, published by Journal Publishing, Inc. on October 7, 1991. The length of the article is 2768 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: ACORN - just a bunch of nuts? (members of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now fight proposed sales-tax increases)(includes related articles on ACORN's founding and its members)
Author: Carrie Rengers
Publication: Arkansas Business (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 7, 1991
Publisher: Journal Publishing, Inc.
Volume: v8 Issue: n41 Page: p1(3)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

William Ewart Gladstone was perhaps the greatest colossus of the Victorian Age. Along with his formidable rival, Benjamin Disraeli, he dominated Britain's political scene from the moment of his appointment as chancellor of the exchequer in Aberdeen's famous coalition ministry until his resignation as prime minister in March 1894, four years before his death. In the intervening years, he held the office of prime minister four times.

With this volume, Richard Shannon completes his magisterial biography of Gladstone. Tracing Gladstone's career from his rise to eminence in 1865 until his death in 1898, Shannon documents his emergence as the dominant personality in the Liberal Party, his activities as a statesman, and his decades-long battle with Disraeli.

In his analysis, Shannon pays particular attention to Gladstone's attempts to integrate his religion with his career. Profoundly influenced by his Anglican Christianity, Gladstone approached his causes with a missionary fervor, Shannon argues. This tenacity is perhaps best illustrated by Gladstone's unyielding support of Irish home rule—a position so at odds with Liberal policies that it caused many Liberals to ally themselves with the Conservatives, thereby instigating the decline of Gladstone's own party.

Customer Reviews:

Gladstone was a puffed up bore.......2000-04-26

Churchill wrote in 'The History of the English Speaking People' that Gladstone's contemporaries thought that he had no judgement, and that the Conservative Disreali government achieved more in five years than the Liberals (of whom Gladstone was prominant) did in nearly fifty. Churchill was being polite - Gladstone was a pious, pretentious windbag and a collosal hipercrite. He doesn't deserve to have two volumes in this detail writen about him - he never did anything to justify this amount of effort. Even Gladstone's wife said that he was a bore.

Gladstone comes across much like a Kennedy - a mediocrity carried aloft by the wealth of a ratbag father, convinced of his own importance, full of the teachings of the Lord and none of His spirit, only attractive when seen from a distance. His father made a fortune from slave plantations in the West Indies, and Gladstone did little to improve on daddy's efforts. He defended slavery in Parliament while writing pompous sermons about the responsibilities of the church. A mean, miserable specimen who never earnt a penny through his own efforts, he inherited and spent a fortune but went into a lather of shock and horror when discovering that his butler had been pilfering and selling partly used candles from his household. Gladstone never improved on these efforts, but then, considering his papal like view of his own infallibility, he never felt the need to.

Gladstone's younger sister took to dosing herself with opium and wiping her backside with religous tracts. Both behaviours are perfectly understandable for anybody who had to live with a specimen like Gladstone. I think the sister is far more deserving of a biography than the brother.

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GLADSTONE: VOLUME II [2]; 1865-1898
Richard Shannon
Manufacturer: Univeristy of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M0U76A

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Widows: Four American Spies, the Wives they left behind, and the KGB's Crippling of American Intelligence
William & Trento, Susan, & Trento, Joseph Corson
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KBJUEQ

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Enjoyable and informative; highly recommended

Spies Wives

Great Format yet I was still disappointed.

Others peoples memories

Great Book

Spies' Wives
Karen L. Chiao , and Mariellen B. O'Brien
Manufacturer: Creative Arts Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife

ASIN: 0887393217

Book Description

Spies' Wives is a unique collection of true stories, anecdotes, and observations about life overseas recorded by spouses, former spouses, and offspring of CIA operatives. Included are insights into living the lie of "deep cover" and coping with strange economies, weird customs and linguistic roadblocks. The authors have culled the experiences of thirty reliable sources to tell what it was like to step through the looking glass of the real world into the wonderful world of espionage, where evacuations, secret meetings, and passionate love affairs are de rigueur.

Customer Reviews:

Enjoyable and informative; highly recommended.......2004-07-07

I received this book as a gift and it sat on a shelf for several months before I took it with me on a trip. I wish I had picked it up earlier, as I enjoyed it very much. It's a quick read and gives a good feel for what it must be like to be married to a CIA agent. The wives have great stories to tell. Now I know something about what those people who were supposedly working for the State Dept. were really doing. I was impressed by the resiliance of the wives and families who had to endure much more hardship and uncertainty in strange countries than I had imagined.

Spies Wives.......2003-01-22

Great book! Full of wonderful stories and so interesting to see how this line of work affected the families of CIA agents! Even the stories the kids told gave one a greater appreciation of what it could be like to have one or both parents in the CIA and travel to all kinds of locations. Great buy!!!

Great Format yet I was still disappointed........2002-11-12

This book just did not maintain my attention enough for me to complete it. I loved the idea and the short story format was excellent. Yet, the "tone" of the storyteller was boring. I felt that in trying to be witty and relay the stories with amusement and excitement, the authors sounded adolescent. Perhaps a sequel with more polished writing would be an improvement.

Others peoples memories.......2001-09-19

I will not be reading this book again. It is a collection of other people's memories. In some of them you have no idea what they are talking about, unless you were there. Others are self-serving. Others are whiny. A few are amazing and give the insight I was hoping to see, but not enough. This is an excellent idea for a book, it just need to be written better.

Great Book.......2001-04-28

WOW!! I have a new respect for the young women who accompanied their CIA husbands over seas. All we ever heard about here was what an easy life they had with their big houses and maids and nannies. We thought that all they had to do was fill their time with fun. No one was able to tell us the real truth. After reading their wonderfully poignant stories (some times sad, some times funny, but always fascinating) I am filled with gratitude and respect for those who made it all the way and even those who didn't. This makes great reading for anybody. It is easy to pick up for just a few minutes at a time but I bet that once you get started you won't be able to put it down for long.

Widows : Four American Spies, the Wives They Left Behind, and the KGB's Cripplin

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Widows : Four American Spies, the Wives They Left Behind, and the KGB's Cripplin
William -- Trento, Susan and Joseph Corson
Manufacturer: Crown Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O6298Q

Widows Four American Spies, The Wives They Left behind, And The KGB's Crippling of American Intelligence

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Widows Four American Spies, The Wives They Left behind, And The KGB's Crippling of American Intelligence
Susan B. Trento, Joseph J. Trento Corson William R.
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UD9KBW

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